Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday March 16, 1999 @05:34AM
from the islands-in-the-clickstream dept.

Richard Thieme has long been
writing a weekly column called Islands in the Clickstream.
Richard wants to run
them weekly on Slashdot -
he would be joining Katz then providing new content on
these pages. I'm excited about this, and I think
many of you will too. The following feature is this weeks
island. Read it, vote on the poll, and hopefully
Richard will be back next week.

Distortions

"We all know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort
it." -- Woody Allen

A couple of weeks ago, it was reported by Reuters News Agency that hackers
had taken control of a British military satellite and demonstrated control
of the "bird" by changing its orbit. The report said the hackers were
blackmailing the British government, and unless they received a ransom,
they would take action. The demonstration was frightening for those who
were just waiting for a blatant act of cyber-terror.

A few days later, the Hacker News Network , an
underground alternative to CNN, reported that the hijacking was bogus.

The Hacker News Network got it right while Reuters got it wrong.

Just as business managers increasingly supervise IT workers who know more
about networks than they do, traditional news sources often cover subjects
they don't understand, and they often get it wrong.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for
Forbes Digital on the unique culture of the
professional Services Division of Secure Computing, where a number of
former hackers help government agencies and large financial institutions
secure their networks. Many articles have appeared recently about former
hackers who have swapped underground lives for stock options, but that
wasn't what my article was about. It was about the mindset that hackers
bring to their work, a map or model of reality that is becoming the norm in
a borderless world, where intelligence operatives are migrating into
competitive intelligence in growing numbers. It's a mindset characterized,
said one, by "paranoia appropriate to the real risks of open networks and a
global economy."

Businesses used to decide on a course of action, then inform IT people so
they could implement the plan. Now our thinking must move through the
network that shapes it, not around it. The network itself - how it enables
us to think, how it defines the questions that can be asked - determines
the forms of possible strategies. So those who implement strategy must
participate in setting strategy, not be added on after the fact, just as
information security must be intrinsic to the architecture of an
organizational structure, not added on as an afterthought.

The mind that designs the network designs the possibilities for human
thinking and therefore for action.

Every single node in a network is a center from which both attack and
defense can originate. The gray world in which hackers live has spilled
over the edges which used to look more black and white. The skies of the
digital world grow grayer day by day.

In that world, we are real birds fluttering about in digital cages. Images
- icons, text, sound - define the "space" in which we move. If the cages
are large enough, we have the illusion we are free and flying, when in fact
we are moved in groups by the cages.

Example: to prevent insurrection during times of extreme civil unrest,
government agencies created groups whose members were potentially
dangerous, building a database of people they intended to collect if things
fell apart. These days, many digital communities serve this purpose.

Example: Last week an FDIC spokesperson provided data on the readiness of
American banks for Y2K. Tom Brokaw of NBC had recently announced, he said,
that 33% of the banks weren't ready, but in fact, 96% of the banks are on
schedule, 3 % are lagging a little, and only 1% are seriously behind. The
biggest threat to the monetary system is a stampeding herd, spooked by the
digital image of a talking head giving bogus information.

The digital world is a hall of mirrors, and the social construction of
reality is big business, fueled by the explosion of the Internet, a
marketplace where the buyer of ideas - as well as items at auction - had
better beware.

This is not just about the distortion of facts by mainstream (or
alternative) news media, nor the exploitation of fear because we know that
fear sells. More and more, we are seeking and finding alternative sources
of information from sources we believe we can trust. Believable truth must
be linked to believable sources, or else we will make it up, pasting fears
and hopes onto a blank screen or onto images built like bookshelves to
receive our projections. Because we like to live on islands of agreement,
receiving information that supports our current thinking, we live in
thought worlds threaded on digital information that isolates and divides
us. But the network is also the means of a larger communion and the
discovery of a more unified, more comprehensive truth.
We live on the edge of a digital blade, and the blade cuts both ways.

"We all know the same truth," said Woody Allen. "Our lives consist of how
we choose to distort it."

Except Woody Allen didn't say it. Rather, he said it through the mouth of a
character in "Deconstructing Harry" named Harry Block. Except Harry Block
didn't say it either. He said it through the mouth of a character he
created in the movie.

Hacking is a kind of deconstruction of the combinations and permutations
available in a network. Deconstruction is essential in a digital world. The
skills of critical thinking, the ability to integrate fragments and know
how to build a Big Picture are more important than ever. Those skills are
critical to hacking and securing networks and critical to understanding who
is really who in a world in which people are not always what they seem.

Plato feared the emerging world of writing because anybody could say
anything without accountability, but he did not foresee the emergence of
tools to document and evaluate what was written. Our world may seem for the
moment to be a-historical, fragmentary, multi-modal in relationship to the
world of printed text, but something new is evolving - a matrix of
understanding, a set of skills, a mindset that lets us sift through
disinformation and use the same technology that lulls us to sleep to wake
ourselves up.

CT: So what do you think? Is he a keeper? Vote
on the poll if you'd like to see this column each week
on Slashdot. Of course, now that we have the customizable
stuff, you'll be able to disable future Island's even if
we do keep him.

Yeah, Katz really needs some constructive criticism. Unfortunately, I don't think he actually reads the comments people post to his articles. I'm not sure I really blame him... he catches enough mindless flaming that it makes looking for the occasional bit of constructive criticism like looking for a screw you've dropped into a pile carpet.

I sent him an email one time (because he claims to read and reply to all his email), explaining to him, as calmly and rationally as I could, why it was that so many Slashdot readers have such a big problem with him - not flaming him (or trying not to), just saying, "Look, this is what you're doing that they don't like, and here are the cultural reasons why..." The response I got back indicated that he a) didn't understand any of the points I brought up, and b) didn't think the personal opinion of one Slashdot reader was relevant (and I'd tried to avoid inserting my personal opinion if at all possible, limiting myself to broad coverage of what I've seen dozens or hundreds of people saying). I started writing a response to clarify the points he missed, came to the realization that I was simply restating my previous email because he'd blatently missed _all_ of my points, and gave it up as a bad job.

All of which is to say: I think we might as well throw Katz back... he isn't learning anything. On the contrary, that bit about the sexbots was the most ridiculous piece of tripe I've seen make it to Slashdot's front page. I wouldn't even know where to *begin* to constructively criticize _that_ rot.

Katz's articles tend to be about Katz, and this is when they are most annoying. Thieme is writing about reality. Summary:

There's so much data in the world, and it's so conflicting, that people are increasingly desperate for ways of weeding out the nonsense and getting to a coherent picture of reality.

This is important because in a world where it's arguably possible for someone to literally drop a spy satellite on your head, or (my own example) actively marginalise your choice of information tool (such as linux maybe?), it's important to have a coherent picture of reality to know what is threatening you before it stomps you completely. Computer hackers (in the old school sense) are particularly well suited to making such a sensible picture of reality, because they are accustomed to making sense of a computer system, which you can't con- if your underlying assumptions are wrong, the computer program is almost certainly not going to work. This forces an examination of the underlying assumptions, which is also the best way to maintain a coherent picture of reality.

There- good summary? Hopefully it's a bit clearer than the actual article. It's a good article at bottom- that is why computer hackers can be more plugged in to reality than the mainstream media- and it also gives a bit of insight on why so many hackers are infuriated by vague ideamongering and confusion, as seen in some of the responses to Op/Ed pieces on slashdot itself. Hackers can react to muddying of their concept-spaces as if physically threatened- what they do requires that they understand how things work, and it's not an option for them to float merrily about in vague notions of philosophical meaninglessness. I too feel that I could write essays for slashdot- however, I figure it's not slashdot's job to legitimise me, so I've put mine up elsewhere. My URL is the site where I keep my stuff, and if you go to the Essays section, that's where you'll find my essays. I try to have them present a coherent picture of reality- that's what they're for;) some ('I, Borg' [airwindows.com]) are even about linux! If anybody wants these or essays like them on Slashdot, they can ask CmdrTaco about it or just send a link, and he can run a story on it or not. I feel the author/editor separation has to be maintained at Slashdot in order for us to continue building a coherent picture of reality from it.:) I'm saying yes to this new writer- largely because he is writing about ideas in places where Katz basically wrote about himself. I figure I can get through the verbiage to the ideas, and there will actually be something there. I look forward to his next essay.

Cracking describes the act of removing copy protection, usually from shareware. Crackers are talented asm coders. Phrozen Crew and United Cracking Force would fall into this category.

Script kiddies are the talentless self-described "hackers" who use programs or scripts they downloaded to break into other computers, usually to cause damage. Also known as "hax0rs" or "hax0r d00ds," in an interesting case of using their own 3l33t-sp34k to mock them. The various web-page "hacker" groups would fall into this category.

Those who actually discover security holes in software are indeed "hackers," in their case, the term is applied correctly. L0pht Heavy Industries and the Cult of the Dead Cow would fall into this category.

We live on the edge of a digital blade, and the blade cuts both ways. "

...Apart from an overuse of metaphor... And what seems to be a destinct desire to be unclear... He has some intersting ideas.... Unfortunately he obscured the synthesis of his disjoint points with an overbearing literary style. A philosphy major at some point, no doubt.

The greatest thing about the new customizable/. is that we can keep him or lose him, and its's our choice.

In the first place it was kind of hard to figure out what he was trying to say. Did he have a point to make? There was some junk about the net becoming more important at the start, and techies getting increased power (which is not really true, imho) but then he just started- well- rambling. The last 5 paragraphs were painful.

Someone earlier mentioned something to the extent that he was spoiled on howto's and O'reily prose. Well, I think good writing should be a lot like that- something easy to read. I don't mean trite or illeterate, I mean Earnest Hemingway or O'Henry prose. When I read an essay or novel by a good and relatively contemporary (otherwise changes in language usage interfere) author there is no effort involved- I don't have to try and unravel convoluted sentances and paragraphs.

On one hand, I think one talking head was too many for Slashdot. This is a great news forum, but if every struggling semi-computer-literate journalist can post silly Katzian articles here, the signal-to-noise unbalance will start driving people off. As long as the editorial pieces stay reasonably rare, it should be OK. (And the customizable slashdot feature kicks major booty, if I do say so myself!)

On the other hand, this guy isn't as bad as Katz. (I know Jon means well, but he's still rather purple and content-free, IMHO.) Apart from a few laughably top-heavy metaphors ("digital blade?" whatever...), this is pretty lucid.

I propose a probationary period. We let him keep posting, for now... but if he ever again posts an article which confuses "hacker" and "cracker" as cluelessly as this one, we kick him out and mail a dead cat to his house.

Look, no one is ever going to reverse the perpetuation of "hacker" as a synonym for "cracker". Accept it and work around it.

Better still, drill it into peoples' heads that there are two types of "hacker", not necessarily mutually exclusive. The illuminati of l0pht.com and similar, for example, are both, at least as far as Joe Sixpack can tell.

This makes a good point, and I have a suggestion to deal with the problem of what gets to take up valuable screen real-estate:

Put the op-ed pieces up on the weekends. Saturdays and Sundays tend to be very quiet, for the most part, and it's more likely that people would be receptive to lengthier, more reflective pieces when they aren't trying to squeeze their/. reading into three-minute breaks during the work week.

Consider it like a "Sunday Edition" of Slashdot - more in-depth articles, op-ed, and now we have links to the Sunday funnies! Something you can enjoy with a cup of coffee without having to rush through it.

Come on, man, if you don't like what the guy has to say, address what he's saying, don't just rip into what you view as trite deconstructionist jargon .

I honestly didn't care much for the article, because it was poorly constructed (from an English-major standpoint) and tried to do too much , thereby losing its focus. But some of the ideas themselves were valid and well worth considering.

I am a long-time anti-Katz-er. I think this guy is better, both in terms of writing mechanics (if there were any dorky spelling errors, I missed them) and in terms of prose quality (shorter, creative without being tedious). I also think the bit about networks constraining/defining our possible modes of action was an insight beyond what Katz could come up with. But it wasn't exactly Claude Shannon or anything.:^P

Now that we have customizable front pages, I say keep him, and Katz too. I personally do not filter Katz, because I just have to read his articles every time (makes me feel better about myself), and I will not filter this column, either.

Simple, suits like decontructuralist bullshit. It makes them feel smart to understand all the words.

The more enlightened of the suits (or those freshly back from leadership-training seminars) read sites like this to try and get a clue what the employees think. If they read someone who's published [sounds of angelic choir] in Forbes Digital [86 heavenly host glee club] and he says that they should ask their IT employees about network strategy before dictating it, then there's a small chance that it actually might happen.

Reading this guy and Katz (both of whom I've voted to keep) has left me with one basic impression: I should become a writer.

See, before I read these guys, I thought that you actually had to be good at it to have anyone read what you wrote. Not so! Just throw out vaguely interesting concepts, sprinkle buzzwords on top, and then totally fail to develop the idea to anything meaningful.

I can do that. I can do that _better_ than these guys can. Look for my next book "Deconstructing Geek Hackers, on the Mountain" in fine bookstores everywhere.

Sheesh. I just want to make it clear that I'm only voting to keep these guys for two basic reasons. One, I think they really, really need criticism and practice to improve their writing; slashdot is good for that. Two, filtering them out has recently become real simple, so if I just get completely tired of reading stuff from this guy, I can remove him from what I see.

I've been reading Thieme's stuff for...maybe two years? Probably longer for Katz (back in HotWired's heyday). I think it's a real coup getting Thieme in to slashdot, particularly since he managed to start making sense again about a month ago.

One misconception: there is any design whatsoever in the emerging Internet, or its society. And the idea that the government can easily get a list of "dangerous" elements by the newsgroups they keep is a bit of misdirection; the government could always get a list of usavories simply by the subscription lists of underground papers, for instance.

I'd like to believe that cluelessness is transient. The future I work for is a future filled with slightly-clueful people, people who know the difference between a hacker and a cracker. Maybe even Ted Koppel will one day understand the communications society we've evolved.

The article's paranoia of ignorance and government maliciousness is unseemly. The government is not clueful enough to use the digital realm against us-- even the groups savvy enough (NSA) to cull useful information from the 'net don't have the manpower to do anything with it. They barely have the power to take out people like Kevin Mitnick.

I don't particularly like this article, but its not like I'll be required to read future articles. I think we might as well keep him for the people who enjoy the articles, and the rest can screen him out.

Sunday's would be a GREAT time to put articles like this. I do like reading other views of people . Lets you know what the rest of the world is thinking. Maybe "Slashdot Sunday" could also have a few guest columnists.. Rob, maybe send out invitations to write a guest column to people inside and outside the industry! They will appreciate (if they have flame proof suits) the feedback that such a vocal audience could give! Hell wouldn't it be great to flame BillGatus of Borg. See what he has to say, if he can actually take off those rose coloured glasses, and drop all the marketing BS...

I think that Eric Raymond has always gotten this one wrong too. If you reverse engineer software for the purpose of making keygens or to find out where to change a JZ to a JNZ, you are a cracker. The name makes sense.

If, OTOH you try to break into systems where your grubby hands don't belong, you are, some what unfortunately, a hacker.

They are two different things that need different names. Until another name is invented for a hacker, you'll just have to live with it. Hell, just call yourself a programmer.

With the advent of/.'s new customizability, if people don't care for it, they can choose not to see it. Personally, I thought it was well written. Even if I didn't agree with all of it, it was still enoyable to read. I voted to keep him.

I had a similar problem getting through the metaphors. The article wasn't bad, it's just that the author needs to be more conscise in getting his point across. I like EngrBohn's distilled summary. Maybe we can have him write for us instead -- it will save me a lot of time reading.

Metaphors are supposed to make it easier to convey a concept, but this article has little but metaphors, making it difficult to follow. I think I can summarize this article: Only trust reliable sources; news media outlets need to keep their facts straight; decisions should be made holistically, based upon facts and not assumptions. --I still say keep him.Christopher A. Bohn

I used to read Freff Connor Cochrane's columns in Keyboard Magazine, and I think what I liked about his writing is reflected in this person's column as well. It is insightful without being overly subjective. Opinions based on observations are more valuable to me than opinions based on maintaining a comic-book anti-hero self-image.

This guy looks like a keeper. What's Stan Kelly-Bootle up to? Maybe add him too...

Same for this guy. I like the Sunday Slashdot idea (or even Saturday). I am curious as to whether this guy is here because he got run off from wherever he was writing before. Perhaps we could keep him and Katz on condition that they edit each other. That should produce some interesting results.

While I'd like to Thieme kept for a bit to find out how good/poor his material is, he (and Katz) should not have the ability to post at will. They should be read and edited by Rob (or someone). This way someone other than the readers, proofs and fact checks the article before its posted. Further one article is not enough on which to base a decission. Let me see three or four and I'll make one. As illustration: I initially voted to keep Katz (not to kick a dead one:), but have gotten to the point where only absolute boredom is the only reason I go near his work.

I say keep him on, and then vote again after a couple more articles. I'm usually pretty good at slogging through this kind of writing, but the buzzword factor was so high I was having problems gleaning any real content. In the future though, if I decide he doesn't have anything interesting to say, I can just use the new nufty-difty filters and ignore his posts. Floats my boat.

Had he written the piece in the style of a philosophy text, he would have started with five pages of definitions nobody else in the field agrees with, followed by a ten-page rant about why his views of qualia are superior to everyone elses:-)

Disclaimer: CompSci major doing doctoral work at a philosophy department - any bias is my own fault.

I like his comments. He, Katz and others are good at devising metaphors and explainations that other groups can use to better understand the world as the 'geeks' see it. That metaphor about carrying the birdcage around is a really powerful one. It could be useful to explain alot of things, technical or not.

The first time I hit the "deconstruction" line, I thought, 'Oh, Christ. Not again...'. Geeks have it easy in the wrong word department. At least "hacker" is sometimes used correctly, whereas "deconstruction", in my experience, is never used right. Here's a quick primer for the unfamiliar:

'Deconstruction' != 'taking apart'

But I read it again, and, although I suspect he doesn't even know it, he did sort of get the idea right. In the first two sentences at least. The method of deconstruction is indeed very much like a litererary version of an IP-spoofing attack. The idea is to take a central metaphor or comparison in the work in question, and see how it can become unstable, through different readings, different meanings of the words, etc. Much like a supposedly "priveleged" host can be taken over by a "trusted" subordinate machine (which is of course being spoofed by a totally different machine, the "supplement" in deconstructo-speak). So bravo for this point, which is a new one on me.

The next sentence, of course goes on to provide evidence that he has no idea what he just said, with all that blather about the big picture, which is pretty much the opposite of what deconstruction is about, and hacking, for that matter. PHB's are the people who see the "big picture". That's what they're there for. New-critics, Marxist critics, Feminists... in the world of words, these are the PHB's; the big-picture types. And thus, he snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

I say keep, but then again, I don't feel like I have much right to tell Rob what to put here anyway. I just wanted to bitch about the world's lack of understanding of, and continuous perverse need to misuse, deconstruction.

P.S. Sorry about all the "quotes". It's hard to restrain myself when I get writing about deconstruction:-)----------------------

Perhaps the most important lesson I learned in high school was simply:

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE AND WRITE ACCORDINGLY

Whilst I do enjoy articles on something other than kernel update 2.2.3ac93, Katz and this new guy don't seem to be able to apply this rule. In my experience, the hacker audience has the following characteristics:

They prefer their information dense-packed, but expressed explicitly and with clarity.

They are interested in philosophical discussion, but mostly don't have a background in it and are deeply sceptical of the "postmodernist/structuralist crap" coming out of Gen X writers and their own dippy liberal-arts acquaintances:), which often tends to go against charactistic 1, and

Have their own history and philosophy, and aren't terribly impressed with anyone who tries to preach to them without bothering to gain an understanding of it.

So, IMHO, if the less-technical writers who want to write here would like a more friendly response, they should take steps to address these points. As a starting point and an excellent introduction to hacker culture (though not, of course, a be-all and end-all), why don't they have a look at The Jargon File? [tuxedo.org]?

Well how would I go about "substantiating" the fact that I simply don't like his article? What do you want a reference to? Perhaps the IETF can cobble up some RFC for "Gut Feelings" that I can point to to make you feel better.

I like the new guy. Indeed, apparently quite a few people like the new guy. I would assume the folks who are making snide comments voted in the poll along with everybody else. The overwhelming majority of the voters, so far, seem to want to keep him. The usual batch of flamers explains why this is a terrible idea. It's pretty funny.

Well, I for one am going to filter him out if he stays. I'm one of the apparent minority who actually likes Katz's stuff so it isn't animosity toward the topics. I just really didn't like this guy's writing style.

I feel like a voice in the wilderness here, but I find his prose style overbearing and pretentious. Let's not stroke the ego of another hacker wannabe.

The quality of his thesis is better than the quality of his prose. This man needs a tough, competent editor: with a little ego-deflation this article would be very good. But I don't see Slashdot as a literary forum and, no offense Rob, I am not sure any of "us geeks" are qualified to be that tough, competent editor.

Keep him on. We as a group tend to distort things to fit our own model of reality, and I think that the more writers who are around to step outside this view give us a chance to receive new perspective. While Katz tends to write so that his audience likes him (something he hasn't quite got the hang of considering the reply posts), this guy seems to just write out what he has found.

As far as the Katz haters, I understand that he is trying to evangelize his works and that he is in fact "preaching to the choir." I didn't get a sense of evangelism from this one, so time will only tell if he will demean himself to that level. The general sense though around here is that we're geeks and we don't need preachy effects in articles, just plain, hard facts and numbers. We like those.

One really nice thing about that vote button is that lurkers count. I think there's a few people here who think that the loudest person should win, which is a problem common to all online discussion forums -- not just/.

Oh wow. I had to read this twice to get the jist of it. Usually as soon as I see the word "deconstruct", it's over. Deconstruction is a discredited form of critical analysis (lit-crit) and seemed badly out of place here. But when I re-read...a world in which people are not always what they seem. I had to stop and think. And that was Thieme's intent. Wasn't it? Contrats. It worked. Keep him. But I warn you. As soon as I see the work "SubAltern" in one of his tomes, I'm outta here. Joe

I think having an op-ed area that/.ers can read about is a positive attribute, if for no other reason than that it will cause some interesting flames and thoughts to surface. However, I hate bloatware in both Microsoft and Op-ed pieces. Say what you have to say in the most compressed and eloquent way you can.

I like it. It appears to come from someone who knows a bit about technology and the mind of a hacker (using the proper connotation here). It's concise and not too fluffy like other features authors here who can now thankfully be removed with the check of a box. Keep him around, I say.

I like Katz better. He talks about his own personal experiences which makes for a less dry article. This guy seems to rely too much on fancy metaphors and buzzwords. I also find it hard to follow his line thinking; his theme or purpose isn't clear from the beginning and seems jump around.

This first article suffered from lack of brevity. Although it can be challenging to do so, with some reorganization and editing, my belief is that he probably could have made the same points with about 60% of the words.

In other words (lousy/. pun warning) SLASH out the fat, and keep the thoughts right on the "."